First clinical guidelines in Canada for pain following spinal cord injury

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 58, No. 7, September 2016, Page 404 News

Researchers at Lawson Health Research Institute in Ontario have developed clinical practice guidelines for managing neuropathic pain with patients who have experienced a spinal cord injury. The research team worked with care providers at Parkwood Institute, part of the St. Joseph’s Health Care London family, and an international panel to address the unique challenges for managing pain during recovery and rehabilitation.

Dr Eldon Loh, Lawson researcher and physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at St. Joseph’s, and his team recognized that pain can be an overlooked part of a spinal cord injury and plays a major factor in the success of rehabilitation. The results of the 3-year process led to recommendations for screening and diagnosis, treatment, and models of care. Important clinical considerations accompany each recommendation. The research will inform new tools and resources for care providers and patients.

The new guidelines have been published in Spinal Cord and are available online at www.nature.com/sc/journal/v54/n1s/full/sc201688a.html.

The Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation and Rick Hansen Institute provided funding for the research study.

. First clinical guidelines in Canada for pain following spinal cord injury. BCMJ, Vol. 58, No. 7, September, 2016, Page(s) 404 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply